


Archivist(s)

by DpsMercy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It of Sorts, No beta we die like Gertrude's assistants, Ooops all archivists, Sasha gets to smite Not!Sasha, gonna add more characters later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:08:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DpsMercy/pseuds/DpsMercy
Summary: “Why don’t we all record statements?”Jon pauses midway through deleting the last of his recording on the laptop and frowns as he considers her question. “Elias said that that’s done by the Head Archivist.”“Eh, it’s not written anywhere.” Tim waves his hand in the air as if to push the notion away.***Or - what if they were all Archivists?
Relationships: Helen Richardson & Michael Shelley, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 32
Kudos: 178





	1. And so it begins

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to all the people in the Octokittens anonymous server who enable me to write this.

“Okay, no, that makes no sense.” Sasha huffs as she finally gives her seat up for Tim, who quickly resumes opening and closing files and trying to figure out what could have gone wrong.

The entire archival team is gathered at the desk, hunched over Jon’s laptop and the corrupted recordings that return nothing but a screech of static and painful feedback. Tim had first greeted Jon’s tired complaints with laughter and friendly mockery about him being an old man who can’t even click ‘record’ right, but that was almost two hours ago and before the tinnitus from all the failed playbacks set in.

They have tested out recording statements on all of their phones, all of their laptops, even the shitty mics that they got from Rosie. Everything is a mess.

“Maybe it’s the software,” Martin repeats his suggestion just to fill the silence. He’s currently leaning to peer over Tim’s left shoulder, though she quickly slips away to rifle through the drawers of her desk.

“I reinstalled it. Twice.” Jon crosses his arms. “Honestly, we shouldn’t waste time on this, we all have follow-ups to do and-”

“I’ve got it.” Tim throws up his arms in a cheer and both Jon and Martin have to stumble back or risk getting hit in the face. They nearly knock into each other as they do so. While they mumble empty apologies to each other, Tim spins around on the office chair to offer them a wide grin. “Shit’s irrevocably fucked. Trashed beyond belief. Dictionary definition of a mess. Chaos incarnate-”

“Yes.  _ Thank you _ , Tim.” Jon cuts him off. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so is there anything else left? What haven’t we tried yet?”

“Come on boss, chill. We’ll figure it out.” Tim rolls his eyes as Sasha makes grabby hands towards him and so he shoves the laptop towards her. Maybe she can find something they have yet to try five times over.

Jon doesn’t even bother to criticize their rough handling of his things anymore. “Yes, but I still lost a good few days of work.”

Tim kicks away from the desk and sends the office chair rolling towards the door, then yelps as it hits the sill and comes to a sudden, teetering stop. Jon’s disappointed mumble of ‘Really, Tim?’ goes unheard as Sasha and Martin laugh at Tim’s theatrics as he flails about before he can right himself enough to leap out the chair.

“Right, um, anyway.” He makes a show of dusting himself off, then moves the chair out of the doorway. He absolutely intended for that little fumble to happen, most definitely, yes. “I think there are some tape recorders in storage. Might as well try those.”

Whatever the reply is from the other three, it is unfortunately cut off as Sasha presses play and an unholy screech of rebelling machinery fills the room. Tim flees before he can lose whatever remains of his hearing.

Twenty minutes, a dozen of overturned boxes, and two nearly-collapsed shelves later, a few random lines of Nathan Watts’ statement can, at last, be heard, played back in Jon’s voice and surrounded by the uneven crackle of long-unused magnetic tape.

Sasha, Tim, and Martin all cheer, while Jon glares at the tape recorder like it has personally offended him.

“Lighten up, Jon.” Tim throws an arm over his shoulders and ignores how Jon bristles like a cat that got drenched in water. He’s not about to let Jon crawl back into his little professionalism shell after spending a good few years attempting to get him to come out of it. “ We got  _ something  _ working, at least.”

“Doesn’t change that I lost two complete recordings.” Jon only gives a half-hearted attempt at getting out of Tim’s side-hug but manages anyway. He drops into his chair and pointedly starts to delete old recordings. Maybe the assistants would get a hint and leave him to do his work. “I now have to do this all over. Again. For the third time.”

“Or I could do it.” Sasha points out from where she’s looking over the dusty tape recorder. There’s a speck of something staining one of the corners that she pretends not to suspect to be blood. Did someone have a nosebleed? The air is dry enough in the archives to lead to one. Anyway, “Why don’t we all record statements?”

Jon pauses midway through deleting the last of his recording on the laptop and frowns as he considers her question. “Elias said that that’s done by the Head Archivist.”

“Eh, it’s not written anywhere.” Tim waves his hand in the air as if to push the notion away. He doesn’t bother to hide his excitement at the idea. It just sounds fun, or at least much more fun than just playing a game of ‘was this statement giver drunk or high this time?’. “It would be a good break from research.”

“Plus it would make sense, yes?” Sasha claps her hands together, actually quite excited at the prospect. “We all cover the cases we follow up on, so that way we know that all the pertinent information is included and whoever listens to the case knows who to ask for more details.”

Jon goes to protest because it’s the job Elias gave him and he’s not about to shirk his duties, but Tim cuts him off before he can get a word out.

“Come on, give us something fun to do once in a while. We’re all good with it. Isn’t that right Martin?”

“Oh, what? Oh! Yes, that sounds fine.” Martin shrugs more out of the anxiety of suddenly being drawn into this situation than anything else. He quickly fishes for some argument. “We would get the backlog covered much faster.”

Tim offers him a grateful smile and, since Jon isn’t looking at Sasha at the moment, she gives him a thumbs up too. “Come on boss, admit that it’s a good idea.”

Now, Jon is a man who likes to follow the directions given to him to the letter. But he’s already a bit out of his depth in a job he’s not quite qualified for, and the three pairs of expectant eyes in front of him chip away at his resolve all too easily.

Plus he’s the Head Archivist, not Elias, so he might as well decide how this little department works.

So in the end, Jon just sighs and lets his shoulders drop. “Very well, I guess I’ll have to find more tape recorders.”

Tim unveils the three recorders hidden in his drawer with so much enthusiasm that one goes flying across the room.

And so the work at the archives resumes.


	2. A hint of powers - Martin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first Archivist quirks show up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might come slower because Uni started back up. Or they might come more often because biomed is very boring.

Work at the archives settles into a new routine soon after the assistants all decide to record statements too. Pick up a statement from one of the to-be-reviewed piles -damn there were many of those- and follow up on whatever you could, then record the statement in the little office-probably-actually-a-broom-closet.

Martin cracks open the door so said broom closet office only to be greeted with Tim’s voice narrating some unfortunate person’s horrific experience into a tape recorder. 

“I was overwhelmed by the sweet scent of decaying flesh and the moans of pain and despair. The sharp smell of...-” As Tim reads on, he gestures along grandly with the one hand that isn’t holding onto the papers. Tim also has his chair tilted back at a dangerous angle, his feet kicked up possibly uncomfortably high onto a filing cabinet, and so each flourish of his hands threatens to send him toppling down.

Martin and Sasha, who is currently wrangling boxes in storage, may or may not have placed bets on when he would finally topple down.

Still, Tim doesn’t stop reading even as he spots Martin in the doorway.

“Tea?” Martin mouths, then mimics drinking from a cup to get the point across.

Tim nods and gives him a thumbs-up, though despite his grin the words he reads still mimic the anxiety and fear of their original source. 

It would be creepy, had Martin not been himself in such a situation, or seen Sasha and Jon read statements too. It’s maybe a little weird, how much the words draw the reader in, how wrong it feels to stop mid-recording for a conversation. They never speak about it, but the entire archival team has taken note. Martin is just happy that recording the statements seems to come naturally to him, at least after the first few hiccups. He doesn’t have to fake it like the rest of his qualifications.

Tim’s eyes are back on the text, a bit distant, as if he isn’t reading at all. “His forehead was slick with sweat and his chest rose and fell quickly, then abruptly-”

The narration becomes muffled as Martin closes the door, careful not to make too much noise as he does so, then heads off towards the break room.

He lets himself take a mental step back as he goes through making tea on automatic. Boil water, pick out cups and tea bags, add sugar and milk. He isn’t sure why he prepares five cups instead of four, and goes as far as to dig out that one weird bag of green tea hidden at the back of the cupboard as he does so. He barely takes notice, as something in him knows, no, _Knows_ , that action to be right.

He delivers tea to Tim and Sasha and his own desk, and ends up standing in the little kitchenette with two cups in front of him. It’s only then that he realizes that he has no clue why the extra is there.

 _Because tea makes people feel better_ , his own thoughts remind him, _especially when you’re lonely_.

Someone is coming down into the Archives. He hears the footsteps on the stairs a moment after he realizes that fact, but that also doesn’t quite register as he walks out of the breakroom to see who it might be, two cups still in hand.

He hopes it’s not Elias. He doesn’t like that man’s eyes, for whatever silly reason.

It’s not Elias.

He doesn’t recognise the woman that comes down the stairs. Back straight, shoulders back, chin up, her solid-black outfit immaculate, she looks almost intimidating. Still, if Martin knows anything, then he knows people; there’s an air of exhaustion and nervousness around her, as if she’s holding on to nothing besides the front of having a task ahead of her. 

“I was told I could make a statement here?” The woman says. One of her hands clutches the strap of her purse in a white-knuckled grip.

Martin has no clue what to do about that, but that’s nothing new. He smiles, the same smile he has practiced over the years in front of mirrors and people, friendly and harmless. It’s easier to be pleasant and competent-looking with strangers than with people he works with, there’s no anxiety about what he can do to make sure they don’t hate him.

“Of course, um, right over here.” He gestures for her to follow him to Jon’s office.

It’s the head archivist's job to take statements, right? He’s rather sure that that’s the case.

“Tea helps,” he says out of nowhere as something nags him to get rid of that extra cup in his hands. “Green tea, three sugars.”

It sounds terrible to him, but as he passes it to Naomi -did she introduce herself to him?- she looks down at the cup in surprise, then smiles. “That’s, uh, exactly how I like it. How did you know?”

He has no clue. What’s that line Tim likes to use?  
“Archival secrets.” He tells her. He forgets to knock on Jon’s door, just opens it and walks in. “Hey, Jon? Miss Herne is here to make a statement.”

Jon’s very annoyed frown is replaced by confusion as he looks past Martin to look at Naomi. Martin uses that moment of distraction to put down Jon’s tea on an empty corner on his desk and make his escape.

He closes the door behind himself and just stands there for a moment. Hopefully he didn’t just make a mess, he really needs this job.

Despite it being closed, the office door is still thin enough to let sound through as introductions are made. Then-

“Is everything alright?” Jon asks.

“It’s nothing.” Naomi takes a moment to reply. “I just don’t think I ever gave your assistant my name.”

Martin flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided that Martin would end up with more people-Knowing powers (because he *did* know how to play both Peter and Elias in canon). What do you all think Sasha and Tim will get? (Jon is obviously spooky google)


End file.
